


People are not Born Monsters

by Stucky101



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Episode: s01e20 Nothing Personal, F/M, Grant Ward Feels, Grant Ward Redemption, One Shot, Skye | Daisy Johnson Feels, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:02:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27076942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stucky101/pseuds/Stucky101
Summary: A one-shot Grant Ward redemption fic starting and ending at season 1 episode 20 "nothing personal".Written for a school assignment, please enjoy! If you have any feedback at all it would be greatly appreciated!.
Relationships: Skye | Daisy Johnson/Grant Ward
Comments: 10
Kudos: 39





	People are not Born Monsters

Monsters are not Born 

Skye smiles and waves as her friends embark on yet another adventure, another risky mission that could very well end with them dead. That was their norm, but it never got easier watching the only people who’d ever cared about put themselves in danger, especially when she wasn’t with them and just had to watch helplessly from afar.

Fitz and Simmons walked pressed up against each other, and Skye knew logically that it was to conserve heat, but she couldn’t help but suppress a grin at the dots her brain connected. Everyone referred to Jemma Simmons and Leopold Fitz simply as Fitzsimmons, as though they were one person, which really wasn’t far off the mark. They were inseparable and practically had the same thoughts at the same time. Anyone but them could clearly see the romantic tension between them but they hadn’t yet addressed it. 

Coulson walked with a curve to his shoulders that was entirely new to Skye. He was always endlessly optimistic, even when S.H.I.E.L.D had been crumbling around them, overtaken by HYDRA agents. He had followed the coordinates that had lit on his badge all the way to the very edge of the world in blind trust. That was just the kind of man that Coulson was. There was always a bit of apprehension throughout the team before missions but Coulson’s walk seemed to hold a special sort of tenseness and Skye briefly wondered if the mission was personal to him. 

May walked confidently, a few paces ahead of the other three. It was fitting, Skye noted, as Agent Melinda May always seemed to be a few steps ahead of everyone. Prepared for everything and ice-cold, even to her own team, May was quite daunting, really, and Skye held a deep admiration for her. 

She turned away from the door as the swirling white snow swallowed her friends and turned to Ward, who was standing a couple feet behind her, also watching the rest of the group’s departure. 

“C’mon,” she said, gesturing for him to follow as the doors slid closed behind her, cutting off the freezing cold air blowing in from outside. She walked him to the medbay and he rolled his eyes.

“I’m fine,” he complained, “look, Simmons already fixed me up,” he waved vaguely towards his bandaged face. Simmons wasn’t technically a doctor but with 5 phds in different biologic fields she served the purpose of one well enough when needed. 

Skye curved an eyebrow at him, eyes flicking to the spots of blood already showing, a bright contrast to the pale white of the bandages. He’d escorted one of the HYDRA leaders, John Garrett, a man who they’d considered a friend, to a SHIELD prison and come back more than a bit battered. He’d explained that Garrett hadn’t gone without a fight, but in the end Ward had defeated him. Skye wasn’t surprised, to be honest. Ward was over 6 feet tall and an absolute god in battle. He’s a level 7 specialist and has the skills to prove it. She may also have had a tiny little crush on him, but it was no big deal, really. 

He sighed, “Really, I’m fine” She studied him for a few seconds, considering, then relented. 

“Okay, okay,” she said, worrying her bottom lip. “We all got a lie detector test already. Why don’t you go ask Koenig to give you yours so you can get a lanyard?” she held up hers to show what she meant. Koenig was the SHIELD employee who’d been waiting for them at the super-secret base in the middle of nowhere. 

He nodded and set off, presumably following the map Skye had given him, to find Koenig. He met up with her in Koenig’s office sometime later and she smiled at him. “How’d it go?” she asked eagerly. He held up a lanyard with the name Grant Ward spelled out on it in answer. “Nice,” she grinned.

She twisted the tablet she was holding so he could the screen, which showed a map of the base and dots labeled with names. “Look what I found,” she said happily. 

“Is that our lanyards?” he asked, pointing at the dots with their names on them. 

“Yup,” Skye said, “isn’t it cool?” he just laughed bemusedly and she rolled her eyes at his lack of answer, pulling the tablet back into her lap. “Do you see a laptop anywhere?” she asked the specialist, searching the room. 

“No. Why?” he inquired. 

“If I just had my laptop I could hack into the FBI satellite cams and see where there are other SHIELD agents on the run,”

He nodded his understanding and glanced around the room briefly. “I don’t think it’s here,” he told her.

She nodded and swung her legs off the couch, still holding the tablet. “I’ll go try and find it,” she said, “wait here”. 

She set off, using the tablet as a map. Koenig would surely know where it was. She got to the storage room where Koenig’s lanyard showed him as being and frowned. “Koenig?” she called, getting nothing but an echo in return. She swallowed, puling an ICER from her pant leg and holding it unsteadily. Fitzsimmons had really outdone themselves with this upgrade of the tranquilizer gun, it was balanced but light and even she, as a rookie, could use it well. 

Still, she was irrationally nervous as she made her way through the large, echoey room. Something felt inherently wrong and a sense of foreboding filled her. “Koenig?” she called again, albeit a bit more nervously. As she progressed through the room she heard an eerie dripping sound and she frowned. She looked back down at the tablet, which was showing Koenig as being right next to her, their dots practically on top of eachother. 

She turned around slowly, scouring every area around her, but still didn’t see Koenig. She stood there for a few more seconds, puzzling over the missing agent, when a drop of something warm and wet hit her shoulder. She startled violently and twisted her arm around to see it properly. Even the quick glimpse she managed to get confirmed her fears. A drop of bright red blood was splattered onto her shoulder. She looked up, knowing and dreading what she would find.

There was Koenig, lying in the vent above the storage room, neck dripping blood onto her. 

There was only one other person who could have done this, she realized, as she stood staring into Koenigs’s dead eyes. She tore her gaze away from the deceased agent and looked back at the tablet in her hand. The dot labeled “Grant Ward” was drawing closer to her and she muffled a scream.

She raced through the shadowy hallways until she got to a bathroom, straining to hear Grant’s footsteps through the maze of the base. She leaned over the sink, breathing hard, panicking. She felt like she was about to puke. Months of living with him, working with him, and it was all a lie. Tears spilled over her cheeks as he called her name, actually managing to sound concerned. He was a great actor, and she knew he was skilled, but she’d never thought that she was the one being tricked. 

Closing her eyes, she leaned against the wall faintly, trying to get a hold on her world, which was very quickly spinning out of control. Ward didn’t know she was onto him yet, so she had to play along. After slipping out of her jacket and tossing it in the trash so he wouldn’t see the blood, she splashed water on her face to erase the tear tracks. Her tears had ended as abruptly as they had begun and the cool water felt nice against her fevered face. 

“Skye?” Ward called again. It made her want to throw up, hearing her named called in such a concerned, gentle tone from someone she knew was a backstabbing murderer working for more backstabbing murderers. 

“I’m in here!” she answered after a few seconds, bracing herself to be amicable to the murderer. 

He rounded the corner and half-smiled at her. While that once would have made her happy now filled her with utter revulsion. “I was looking for you,” he told her, as if she didn’t already know.

“Oh,” she grinned at him, “sorry, I was in the bathroom,” she explained, the apology, however small, tasting sour in her mouth.

“So did you find Koenig?” he asked, and maybe it was just because she knew his secret but he actually looked nervous. There was no cause for him to be nervous, she thought, he could easily take her out and escape before the rest of the team returned. He could probably even figure out a way to blame her death on something else and still get his chance to kill the rest of the team. Unless he wasn’t faking everything? Maybe he did actually like her? The thought turned bitter the minute it finished forming. She didn’t want him to like her. She didn’t need the love of a murderous psychopath.

She didn’t say any of this, however, just smiled softly and shook her head, brown curls bobbing. “I’ll keep looking,” she said, gauging his reaction carefully. 

“Later,” he commanded, and she frowned at him, “Coulson’s in trouble,” he added quickly. “I need you to unlock the hard drive so we can help him”. Relief that she hadn’t explained how to open it to the team flooded her. She had downloaded and encrypted all of Fitzsimmons’s data and research when they thought the bus was compromised. It was programmed to erase everything if anyone but her tried to access it, and she needs to be exactly 35,000 feet in the air to put in the passcode and recover the data. Vaguely, she can remember handing it to Ward as they ran through the former SHIELD, now HYDRA facility, trusting him to take better care of it than she could. How wrong she was. 

“What?” she asked, panicked “what happened? Are they in danger?” she really hoped he was lying, because although she was trying not to, she could handle losing her own life to HYDRA, but her teams? No. She wouldn’t be able to live with that. 

“Relax,” he comforted, “it’s not that urgent, but we do need to get in the air immediately.” Swallowing softly, hoping he wouldn’t notice her discomfort, she weighed her options. Revealing that she knew his secret was off the table. He probably wouldn’t kill her, since he obviously needs the data in the hard drive, but instead of playing nice he might decide to let his HYDRA buddies try to torture it out of her, which didn’t sound very appealing, nor is she sure that she wouldn’t give in. She really doesn’t want to leave the base either, once she’s in the air Coulson won’t be able to track her and she won’t be able to warn everyone about HYDRA and Ward. She doesn’t even know where Ward is planning on taking her, but it’s probably a HYDRA base she definitely doesn’t want to be at. Rescuing herself is the only option. She can’t let Ward take her to a HYDRA base, she won’t be able to escape a cell herself and her team is stupid enough that they will try and rescue her and inevitably get captured themselves and she can’t have that. 

“Okay,” she agreed shakily, hoping she hadn’t paused long enough for him to be suspicious. “I just need to do one thing first. Just wait here for me.” Jogging to the kitchen, she searched for a screwdriver, rifling through quite a few drawers before finding one. As silently as she could, Skye crept through a corridor until she found one of the fake windows. Scratching words into the glowing screen without affecting the other side was harder than she thought it would be but she managed. The words, scratched sloppily into a picturesque palm tree at the beach scene, were eerie and she felt bad that her team would have to see this. She flipped the picture so it displayed its other picture and not the carved message. Fitz and Simmons were smart enough that one of them would notice that the picture was on its nighttime scene while the rest were still on their daytime scenes. One of them would surely realize and flip the picture, revealing the white “Ward is HYDRA” etched into the otherwise perfect scene.   
Blowing out a breath, Skye tried to prepare herself mentally for whatever was about to come, but seeing as she had no idea what was coming, she didn’t really succeed. 

“Ready!” she called, and waited for Ward to reach her. When he did, she slipped her hand into his, smiling shyly up at him. He smiled wider than she’d ever seen him smile in return and she felt a pang, thinking of all they could have had if he hadn’t betrayed them.

She felt bad for her team, to be honest. They would come back to an empty base and a dead Koenig with no idea of what had happened. There were security cameras all throughout the base, so at least they would have that. Sadly the only picture she’d been able to reach without Ward seeing her write the message was in the cameras blind spot so there was no reassurance that they would find the message. There was, however, a camera down the walkway and she lifted her eyes to briefly make contact with it. If they found her message they would know that she was walking out of the base hand in hand with someone she knew to be a murderer and traitor.

Poor Coulson would be put of his mind with worry. He has such fatherly instincts around her and Fitzsimmons, whom he refers to as “the kids”. May would be there to calm him down, though, and they would figure something out. 

Once they were on the plane she decided to tell him part of the truth on how to decrypt the hard drive. “The hard drive is location-based,” she told him, weighing her words carefully, “I put in the passcode to start the hack only once it is at very specific coordinates,” this much was true, “if you take me to the diner where I first met Mike I can start unlocking it,” she was surprised at how easy it was to lie to him.

“Okay, he agreed readily, and went to direct the plane. She sighed and sagged against her seat in relief. Hopefully he would stay in the cockpit the whole flight and she could consider what to do next. Luck, however, was not on her side, which wasn’t surprising given the events of the last few hours, but still frustrating. After a few minutes, Ward returned, apparently having put the plane on autopilot. He sat next to her and pulled her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her in a tight hug. She supposed she should be honored. Ward hated contact and barely let anyone touch him, but all she could feel was disgusted. It wasn’t exactly unwarranted either, as she had been the one to initiate contact in the first place but she still wished he wouldn’t touch her. She forced herself to relax against him, knowing she had to play along. He pressed his chin into her shoulder and she hated how comfortable his lap was.

After about an hour the small plane landed maybe half a mile away from the diner and they settled into a booth. Ward handed her a laptop and she messed around for a bit, trying to look busy but not unlocking the drive. 

“Are you almost done? It’s been a while,” Ward asked after about 45 minutes and she stiffened in her seat.

“Just a bit longer. Why?” god she was just as bad as Simmons at lying.

“I’ve seen you hack the FBI in 2 minutes. Why would this take so long?” His voice had dropped dangerously and she shivered.

She fished around for an excuse, feeling like the words were trapped in her throat “I- I just wanted to spend longer alone with you,” she lied. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself to sell the lie all the way. She leaned forward quickly and pressed a quick kiss on his lips, giving herself no time to back out. He looked at her, shocked, for a moment, then grabbed her and pulled her in for a deeper kiss. Her mind blanked and she couldn’t think, couldn’t pull away from this evil man she had had a crush on since she first boarded the plane. 

After a few seconds, he pulled away, leaving her breathless and red-faced. “I’ll finish it now,” she whispered, turning away from his sharp jaw and piercing grey eyes. Of course, she didn’t actually finish the decryption. Instead, she sent the police their location, hoping against hope that Ward wouldn’t look at her screen. 

It took the police 10 minutes to get there. 10 minutes of waiting and hoping that Ward wouldn’t find her out. When they finally did get there Ward noticed immediately, tugging her arm and trying to get her to go.

“No,” she said, voice trembling a bit.

“No?” he asked, seeming genuinely confused. 

She twisted the laptop to show him the screen and she could pinpoint the exact moment realization hit him. His eyebrows set and his jaw tightened and she flinched back as he reached over and slammed the computer closed. 

The police reacted instantaneously to the outburst, whipping out their guns and aiming them at the pair. Skye sighed in relief and put her hands on the back of her head placidly. 

“Be careful,” she warned, “he’s dangerous”. The police really should have taken her warning to heart. As soon as they approached Ward he lashed out, knocking the gun out of the unfortunate man closest to him. She bolted as the diner became pure chaos, guns firing and fists flying. 

Throwing herself into the police car parked outside, she slammed her foot on the gas pedal, not even taking the time to put her seatbelt on. Ward somehow still managed to get out and just barely graze the car with a bullet but she got away.

Even thinking she was safe she didn’t slow down, wanting to get as far away from Ward as possible. Everything was going smoothly, until a figure came flying towards her. She screams as a metal hand reaches through the windshield, breaking it, and wraps around her throat. The world swims in and out of focus as she gasps for air, the cracks in the windshield popping out at her. She refuses to look at the man choking her, the sight of his marred face brought too much sorrow. She had once been friends with Mike Peterson, and she knew he was a good man. HYDRA had caught him in an explosion, hence the scarring on his face, and replaced many parts of him with technology. The technologic replacements were both dangerous to him and made him dangerous. She knew that he was being controlled by HYDRA’s hold on his son, as well as the fact that the technology implanted in him could kill him at whatever moment HYDRA decided to press the button and she couldn’t even bring herself to be angry at him.

Ward had just caught up to the vehicle as she fell fully unconscious, unbeknownst to her. He looked at her prone figure, an overwhelming amount of emotions filling him, he hadn’t been faking his love for her, nor for the rest of the team. But, as Garrett had drilled into him, that was a weakness. He wished he could have been born into a life with room for weakness. 

Skye had never had life easy, he knew, although she didn’t like to discuss it, but somehow there was still so much goodness in her. She was still so filled with love and empathy, even through all the rejection and hatred she’d faced. He remembers her telling him about one specific family she’d been fostered with, whom she had wanted to stay with “I called her mom once,” she had said, punching the bag harder, “I guess it ‘wasn’t a good fit’”. 

Someday she’d understand, and maybe she could show him how to be good again. Maybe there would be enough love left in her for him, and she could show him how to be worthy of it.

Mike lifted Skye up, hooking a metal arm under her knees and a flesh one under her shoulders. He mentally shook himself out of his thoughts and followed the assassin, hating how fragile she looked, hanging limply in the robotic man’s arms, purple handprints bright against her pale skin. It wasn’t right, he thought, Skye was strong, she wasn’t meant to be like this, prone and unconscious in an enemy’s arms. 

Skye blinked her eyes open blearily, trying to get her bearing around a pounding in her head and a throbbing in her neck. Bit by bit the events of the past hour came back to her, and she went to poke at her abused throat, only to find that her hands were locked onto a railing. It took her pounding head a moment to realize that her wrists were handcuffed and fastened to a railing on a plane. A plane that was currently in the air. With her, a dangerous assassin, and Ward. She was trapped. There was no easy way out of this one.

After another couple minutes Ward’s light footsteps echoed through the otherwise silent plane. He said nothing, just silently pressed a cup of water to her lips, and she drank gratefully, the coll water soothing the hot pains in her throat. She couldn’t read his face at all, his poker face stoically in place.

“Please, Ward,” she whispered. He looked vaguely surprised, and she knew that he hadn’t expected her to beg. He knew her well enough to know that she never begged. She didn’t care enough about physical pain to sacrifice her dignity. This, however, was different. Ward hadn’t fully converted to HYDRA, as far as she knew. He could still be salvaged. Still work for good instead of for power and for fear. 

He just shook his head at her and lowered his voice to match hers. “Just tell us how to open the drive,” 

“And no one has to get hurt?” she finished for him, voice scratchy but still biting.

“No one has to get hurt,” he agreed, seemingly unphased by the bitterness coming from the usually placid girl.

She bit her lip. “Hurt me all you want but I won’t unlock the drive. You say that no one will get hurt but I know HYDRA. And so do you. So you know why I can’t do what you’re asking of me”. 

He studied her for a few seconds, then let his poker face drop. 

“Okay,” he whispered, “but you have to trust me”. 

Skye almost snorted. Trust the super spy? Sure, he looked sincere but he was a super spy. Not a far stretch for him to be acting. But she wanted to trust him. Wanted to keep the pseudo family she had been adopted into together.

“Okay,” she said softly. 

“Okay,” he parroted, relieved. 

2 minutes later the plane’s alarm systems were down, courtesy of Skye, and Coulson’s precious car, Lola, was started and ready to go, courtesy of Ward.

The ramp to the cargo hold slid open and Ward buckled himself into the red corvette, double-checked Skye’s seatbelt, and prepared to start it.

Just as he was about to hit the gas petal, the sound of gunfire rang through the small space and he barely had time to curse before the smell of gunfire filled the air. His foot connected with the petal as the metallic sound of bullets pinging against the objects in the room grew unbearably loud.

The car soared through the air a for a second they were weightless and Ward had to laugh at Skye’s gaping mouth. Then, courtesy of gravity, they were falling, and Skye’s screams were significantly less amusing then her wonder, he noted. Fumbling with the buttons on the dash, they fell perilously close to the ground before he managed to flick the right switch and the car’s hover feature activated. 

Skye collapsed against him, breathless, and he couldn’t help but smile at the sign that things were going back to normal. Hopefully the team would share Skye’s forgiveness and welcome him back into their midst. 

After around half an hour Skye was able to hack into SHIELD from her laptop. Usually it would have taken her less time, but she had been unsure of where she needed to hack specifically to find Coulson. When she finally patched them through Ward could hear the worry in their voices. Worry for her being stuck with him, worry that he’d hurt her. He’d never hurt any of them. Even when he was planning on staying with HYDRA the plan was to never hurt them. He hope that someday there would be worry for him again. That he would feel like he had a real family again. The choice to forgive him was up to them, though, and no matter what he did he knew it was their choice to make. 

“It turns out,” Skye was saying, “that Ward isn’t so evil after all,” she twisted the screen to show him and we waved awkwardly, insides twisting and squirming in apprehension. 

Silence on the other end. Then, 

“I knew it,” that was definitely Fitz.

“Oh, shush,” Simmons’ exasperated voice came a fraction of a second later.

Tearful laughter burst out of Skye and soon they were all half-sobbing, half-laughing, their relief to still be together as a team, as a family, enormous. 

He knew that their previous normal wouldn’t ever return. But they would make a new one. This team, he knew, was unstoppable.

“HYDRA here we come,” he whispered.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Feedback appreciated! See you next time! (Also I take requests so lmk if you have any!)


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